Historical A/N: I'm ridiculously fond of this chapter and so much in it was a long time in coming.
Also, thank you to everyone who reads and leaves reviews. You're all wonderful, and I'm so grateful. I haven't traditionally responded to reviews unless I had something substantial to say, but I might start because I really do appreciate it so much. There's a lot of work and time that goes into writing any fanfic and to write one this long, with so many interweaving plot lines, has pushed me in ways I never expected. Everyone's encouragement and thoughts - good or bad - make the tough parts worth it.
I don't know why I'm being so sappy. You can ignore me and expect another chapter in a week!
October 12, 1977
Even though Lily had fought to avoid being the one to make peace with Alice, she didn't put it off once she was overruled by her friends. Lily didn't believe in putting off unpleasant things. If she did, her entire day would be ruined while she ruminated on what was to come. Better to get the unpleasant thing over with quickly and then be able to focus. She had a detention scheduled for that evening anyway, so it wasn't like she ran the risk of ruining a fun night.
Finding Alice turned out to be difficult. She had stopped spending time in Gryffindor common room so that she could avoid her housemates, but Lily had never stopped to question where that meant she was always wandering off to. None of the students from other houses that she interrogated reported having seen her spending time in their common rooms and Lily would have seen her in the library if that was her usual haunt.
It was with great irritation that Lily gave up her search an hour before her detention. Their conversation wasn't something that could be rushed, and she couldn't afford to skive off a detention. She may have been experimenting with rule-breaking, but she wasn't completely out of control yet.
Some noises coming from a broom cupboard caught her detention. Lily figured it was an amorous couple and decided to intervene. It wasn't her day to patrol the corridors, but there was something called propriety. (That Lily had snogged once or twice in a broom cupboard herself was beside the point.)
To her surprise, the object of her search was seated inside the cupboard though, surrounded by three enormous cats and Mrs. Norris. It was clear from the candy wrappers that littered the ground and the stacks of books piled beside her, that Alice had either been camped out in the cupboard for some time now or had been returning to it on a near-daily basis.
"What are you doing?" Lily asked. It wasn't how she had hoped to open their conversation as it sounded accusatory and immediately set Alice on the defensive.
"Nothing. Bugger off," Alice snapped.
One of the cats with discomfiting green eyes and black-and-white fur hissed at her. As if holding it back, Alice placed a large hand on its back.
"I was hoping we could talk," Lily said, swallowing thickly. "Can we go somewhere?"
"I'm fine here, thanks," Alice said disagreeably.
Lily looked around at the cramped space. It was a broom cupboard, which meant it wasn't going to comfortably fit two people on a good day, and Alice had filled it up with her things. She had known that she was going to have to be assertive to force Alice to listen to her when she went into this. No one knew how to make Lily work for something – approval or forgiveness – quite like Alice did.
Resigned, Lily shoved her way into the small space, nearly knocking one of the cats out of Alice's lap in the process, and lowered herself to the floor. Her knees cracked loudly in the silence of the cupboard, and she had to fold her legs inward to fit. Alice readjusted to sprawl out and dominate even more space, a likely intentional move to make their arrangement even less comfortable for Lily.
"So that was pretty cool how you put Jerome in the hospital," Lily said.
She was hoping that if she opened with something unrelated to their fight that things would just naturally progress, and they wouldn't even have to talk about it. Wasn't that how blokes always seemed to resolve things? They never had to spell out all their issues. No matter how loudly Alice liked to bemoan the drama of other girls though, she was at the end of the day one herself, and Lily's evasive strategies weren't successful.
Alice glared at her with narrowed eyes and didn't respond.
Right.
"Listen, I'm sorry about everything. It was immature of me to freak out like I did over the thestral thing. Yes, you didn't do your part of the prank properly, but I was just as much a part of the planning, and it wasn't fair to take it out on you like that," Lily said in a rush of breath, the words tumbling together and becoming practically unintelligible. The steely glint in Alice's eyes didn't soften for a moment, but Lily pressed on. "We're all really sorry and don't want to row anymore. Can we just go back to how things were before?"
Lily had actually put a lot of thought into what she wanted to communicate to her ousted friend. Wandering the halls searching for her, there had been little else to occupy her thoughts, and worries about Alice had been keeping her up most nights since the prefects' meeting when she'd first determined that she wanted things to return to normal between them.
She stood by what she had told James. Explaining to Alice that she had been cutting everyone down to make herself feel less insecure ever since Rory chucked her would be unbearably cruel. Maybe Alice realized the source of her personality transformation, maybe she didn't. Either way, Lily couldn't possibly bring it up in the middle of an apology.
It was better to stick strictly to the events that led to their fight and nothing else. In many ways, it grated to have to do so. Lily's own anger and reaction looked a lot more indefensible, meaninglessly cruel, when she couldn't explain the context behind it all, but if taking the blame was what was necessary to make things right, she'd do it.
Lily figured that Alice would appreciate an apology that was straight to the point anyway. There was no need to dither about the point. Lily loathed ditherers. It was something they'd always had in common.
"So what? I did a nice thing for Shelia and it made you feel like a bitch so now you want to be friends again?" Alice snorted. "Spare me, Lily."
Lily shook her head earnestly. "No! I've been planning to talk to you for days now. I just didn't know what to say, and I guess I was a little scared. What you did with Jerome had nothing to do with anything."
Alice didn't look like she believed her. And why should she? Of all their friends, Alice had always been the one who understood Lily the most. She was likely the only person in Hogwarts other than maybe Sev who realized how easily and unthinkingly Lily could lie when it suited her. In this particular instance, Lily was telling the truth, but she would have said the same thing regardless.
"Alice, I don't want to be friends again because we already are friends. Just because we've been rowing doesn't mean I don't love you," Lily said earnestly. Alice didn't sneer or respond in any hostile way. She just remained stony and still, and it was that lack of response that made Lily start to panic. "Honestly, Al! We all want to make up with you. It's been so hard on all of us."
"Merlin, Lily! Has it? Has completely cutting me out been difficult for you? Have you taken ten extra minutes to fall asleep each night wondering how I was holding up? My heart bleeds for you. It really does!" Alice exploded.
"Listen, I just want –"
Now that Alice had gotten started, she didn't appear to have any plans to stop. A week's worth of resentment had been steadily brewing within her and now she was unleashing it onto Lily. "I give fuck-all about what you want. We haven't just been rowing. You convinced all of my friends to dump me just because something didn't go your way and you can't take responsibility for your actions. Ever! Do you know how exhausting it is to be friends with someone when nothing's ever their fault? You're probably the most obliviously cruel person I've ever met. The second someone doesn't worship the ground you walk on, you lash out and destroy them, and afterwards, you expect them to just get over it. You certainly have since none of it means anything to you!"
For a moment, Lily's emotions balanced on a razor's edge. It was a tossup whether she was going to burst into tears or let her fury consume her. Sirius Black was ultimately at fault for Lily opting for the latter. Alice's claims that Lily never took responsibility for anything were too similar to what Sirius had said to her just that morning.
The unfairness of it bristled. How was Lily supposed to force people to hold her more accountable? She was sorry that professors tended to be more lenient with her or that their classmates shied away from upsetting her. What did everyone expect though, that Lily demand to be berated and punished every time she made a mistake? If they were in her shoes, they'd take the easy way out too. Besides, she certainly didn't feel like people never held her accountable lately. If her life was so blessed, why had she spent her afternoon teetering on the verge of tears because Nott decided she made the perfect target to torture? Why had she been yelled at by not one but two of her fellow Gryffindors?
Blinded by the injustice of Alice's accusations, Lily entirely forgot about her vow from just an hour before to not burden Alice with the details of why everyone had been so quick to desert her. "I didn't even ask the other girls to stop talking to you. In fact, I told them that I didn't want our row to affect them at all. They made the decision all on their own that they were sick of you too."
Alice's grip on the cat in her lap tightened, and the thing went yowling off of her and knocked into Lily. Neither of them paid any attention to the squirming ball of fur. They were too focused on one another. A vein ticked in Alice's throat, angry and red, visible above the collar of her robes.
"I'm not trying to…I just…You haven't been kind to any of us lately. Not since….well, not for a while. The other girls were angry about separate things and made their own choices. I would never have tried to isolate you from the whole group just because we were fighting." Even though it was essentially nothing but a list of excuses, Lily felt relatively proud to have managed even that much. She had succeeded in stopping herself from spewing more hurtful things, which could only count as a win in her book.
Emboldened when Alice didn't immediately refute or attack her, Lily leaned over and took her friend's larger hand in her own. Alice looked down upon their clasped hands with a carefully neutral expression. That quickly, Lily's anger turned off and she was left with nothing but a yearning for everything to be better again. She'd missed Alice. In a way that she had never been able to explain, Alice had always been hers. Marlene and Mary were always too caught up with each other, and Shelia was her best friend, but she was frequently absent, running off with whatever bloke had caught her eye that day. Alice was the one who was always there.
"I want everything to go back to the way things were. Not the way things were a week ago, but how things were last year. We were so happy. Don't you remember?" Lily implored, stroking her thumb along the knuckles.
"Of course you do, Lily," Alice sighed. There was no hostility in her voice anymore, only weary acceptance. "This year, I've been more me than I ever have been before, and you hate it. Maybe I'm not as easy or as fun, but I'm being honest with myself about who I am, and I'm not hiding my feelings just to make things comfortable for everyone else. As my friend, you should be celebrating that, not trying to tear me down."
But this wasn't who Alice was. Lily was so sure of it. The girl she had become friends with was similar in many ways to this version of Alice. They were both loud with boyish senses of humors and had an ever present sharpness behind their eyes. The real Alice was also selfless and considerate and giggled. Was it so wrong to want that back?
"I'm not trying to police who you are," Lily said slowly.
"Yes. Yes, you are," Alice insisted.
"If you think this is who you are now, then of course I'll support that," Lily said, ignoring her interruption. Support was maybe a bit of a strong word for how Lily felt about Alice's shift in personality, but she thought it was close enough. It wasn't like Lily was going to abandon their friendship if the version of Alice she longed for never returned. "But you make people feel bad about themselves, Al. Just because you think something doesn't mean you have to say it."
A small glint of menace returned to Alice's face, jaw turning upward sharply. "Lily, you blow up on people all the time. Some of the things you've said to people you don't like are unbelievable."
"There's a difference between saying something mean because you're angry and saying it because you can," Lily said.
This was strange territory to be drifting into. She did see Alice's point. Recently, she'd been trying to be more aware of how she treated the people around her. Just the other day, she'd apologized to Potter after losing her temper about her height, hadn't she? The Lily of past years wouldn't have even considered that she may have done something wrong there. But Alice had probably seen Lily decimate dozens of people over the years, and then sweep away without a hint of remorse.
She didn't…she didn't think of herself as a mean person. There were few people as polite as Lily, and sometimes it seemed like there wasn't a person in the school that didn't love her. If she were honestly so terrible, there should have been consequences.
Sirius's words about how no one ever held her accountable drifted through her mind and dismantled that argument.
None of it made sense. Lily was, however, pretty confident that she was onto something about Alice and the thoughtlessly cruel things she would say to everyone around her being different. Alice never seemed upset when she did it. Everyone was supposed to pretend as if nothing had even happened after Alice told them how annoying they were or how their problems were pointless. Lily couldn't begin to guess why Alice said the things she did, but she knew they weren't right.
It didn't occur to Lily to ask.
Alice closed her eyes and huffed, "I'm not sure how you think you're going to get away with twisting everything that happened to make you the victim. Me being a big meanie who says hurtful things has nothing to do with you losing your shit about the thestral thing."
"I'll tell you," Lily said quickly.
She levelled Alice with her most serious expression because she needed her to understand that this was actually a big deal for Lily. Opening up about the turmoil that had wrecked her after Daisy went wild in the Great Hall was hard for her. It touched on too many subjects that Lily tried to deny even existed. She would do it because Alice was too important to her to not, but her hands were already starting to sweat as the anxiety set in.
The night she'd touched on it with James had been a fluke. She'd been too tired or too stressed or too something to freak out. There was also something undefinable about the way James looked at her that made him easy to open up to, that made her feel less afraid of herself.
"Do you know I cancelled my subscription to Witch Weekly? I wasn't ever obsessed with it or anything, but I liked reading it. I always had. I know it doesn't have any real reporting or educational value, but I liked knowing what was going on in wizarding culture, and I care about my hair and things like that. Every time I'd get it delivered though, you'd make some comment about how you didn't realize I'd traded in my brain for boobs or about how girls who read that stuff are desperate slags with no goals for themselves. So I cancelled it," Lily said. "I care about what you think of me, so I make all these little changes to my life in the hopes of convincing you I'm worth it."
Alice shifted uncomfortably. "Still doesn't explain the thestral."
"I never wanted to go through with it. I knew it was a terrible idea, but I also knew that you'd be annoyed with me if I said we shouldn't do it. Let's be honest, Alice, you'd have called me a coward and spent the next five days harping on about it," Lily explained. "I just wanted you to think I was cool."
"You can't make your decisions based on other people," Alice said firmly.
Lily flicked her hair in frustration. She knew that. Why did people always insist on answering back with the world's most obvious advice? Growing a back bone was on her to do list. No worries. She just wanted Alice to understand.
"I'm not saying it was fair, but I wouldn't have gone for the plan if I wasn't scared of disappointing you. That's why I lashed out when things went wrong. I blamed you for it," Lily forced herself to finish.
It was a long time before Alice said anything in response. She almost did by the looks of it several times, opening her mouth before shutting it and running an exasperated hand over her face. Lily appreciated that she didn't just respond with whatever first came to her mind because it was likely unkind, but the anticipation was only making her more anxious. Her only source of comfort was that Alice still hadn't shaken off her hand, and she could focus on the familiar tanned fingers.
"I don't forgive you," she said finally. "I don't forgive you, and I certainly am not going to forget this. You have no idea how hard this last week has been for me. I'm not you, Lily. You could find just about any group of students and convince them to hang out with you for a week. People love you. I've just been…here."
Lily sincerely hoped Alice was referring to an existential sense of loneliness when she said 'here' and not the broom cupboard in which they currently resided. Judging by the well-used look of the space and the mystery cats, Lily knew that her hopes were pointless. Her heart twinged painfully as she accepted the truth: Alice had been spending her evenings hiding out in a broom cupboard so that she didn't have to see them.
"That's fair," Lily croaked out.
"I think that maybe you don't forgive me either though," Alice said, giving Lily a knowing look. "I'm not going to apologize, and you're not going to forgive me without one. We both know your pride would never allow it…so, let's just…we'll be friends again. We'll just have issues."
Lily knew her face showed her deep skepticism of this plan. Neither one of them was the passive-aggressive type, someone who could pretend like nothing was wrong and then cut their enemy down covertly. They had tempers. Lily didn't think they could bring all of their issues into their renewed friendship without it blowing it up all over again within the day.
Yet, without an apology, Lily knew Alice was right and that she wouldn't be ready to forgive. She'd known it was a pipedream, but she had held out hope that this conversation might end with mutually exchanged apologies. Lily was guilty of plenty here, but she wasn't the only one in the wrong. She was too sad, too guilty at the moment to really feel it, but she knew that resentment about being the only one to have apologized was going to rear up later.
"As long as we spend time together like normal, so that we have a chance to fix them, I can accept that," Lily conceded.
Alice smiled tightly. "Now all I need is an apology from Mary, Marlene, and Shelia and we'll be set."
"I think they were hoping you would accept my apology on their behalf," Lily stuttered awkwardly, aware that the chances of that happening were practically nonexistent.
Silence stretched long and unbreachable between them. Neither knew how to move forward under the new terms of their friendship. In that moment, their emotions were too raw and they didn't especially like each other. Anything Lily could think of to say now would sound callous or superficial.
"I have detention, so I need to go," Lily said finally.
Alice didn't ask why. She appeared relieved that Lily would be leaving her once more to her solitude. Lily supposed the cats never judged her.
"Lunch tomorrow?" Lily asked hopefully.
"…Yeah, Lily. I'll see you for lunch tomorrow."
Lily reflected as she left on how everything she had thought she discovered about the nature of apologies that week had just been proven false. There was no relief. Nothing was fixed. As she trudged towards detention, all she could feel was the first inkling of fear that if an apology wasn't going to solve anything, she wasn't sure what was.
In her Hogwarts career, Lily had served exactly three detentions. Two had been with McGonagall during fourth year because she had fallen into the terrible habit of oversleeping and had thus been late to class so many times that the stern professor had lost all patience with her. Arguments that Lily wouldn't have such a terrible time waking up if she wasn't staying up past two in the morning revising for McGonagall's own class, had fallen on deaf ears. The third detention was served after Lily and Alice were caught after curfew bringing a very drunk Shelia home from a party in sixth year.
All in all, she was probably in the running for most behaved witch in the castle.
Of those three detentions, none had been served with Mr. Filch. She'd heard the horror stories, of course, about how the cantankerous man yearned for the days where he could torture wayward students or about how he subjected them to the most laborious of punishments. To Lily, it all sounded like hogwash.
She and the caretaker had a perfectly lovely relationship. They were frequently united on the same side in their desire to prevent wrongdoing in the castle, and he always helped with the decorations for major holidays. Filch may have looked like a storybook villain, but he was really just a harmless man who was given no respect. Lily rather liked him.
Also, he was a cat lover, and Lily adored cats. If Mary wasn't allergic, she would have surely purchased one years ago. And Alice claimed Lily didn't take others' needs into consideration. Bah!
It was this sunny outlook on the normally despised caretaker that led to what was likely the most bizarre pre-detention lead up in Filch's life. Rather than the nerves or grumpiness that students usual displayed whenever they had to meet him for a detention, Lily brought only smiles.
Lily stood before Filch's desk, waiting for her partner for detention to arrive. She had been precisely fifteen minutes early, which had shocked Filch who had still been having his supper. To Filch's confusion, Lily didn't wait outside but rather began to enthusiastically inform him about her decorating plans for the Halloween feast.
"As I said before, nothing is finalized, but I really think we can do something amazing this year. You know, in the muggle world, people have these haunted houses where the whole purpose is just to scare your friends. They fill it up with cobwebs and creepy crawlies and then you go just to be frightened," Lily told him.
While still thrown by Lily's conversational attitude towards detention, Filch did brighten a bit at her description of haunted houses. "What about chains? Could you threaten to hang a few firsties by their toes?"
"Absolutely! Threats of torture are perfectly in the Halloween spirit. Some of the best haunted houses are ones where they hire actors to dress up in costume and scare people as they walk by. They'll chase them through the rooms, and once, I even had a man in a mask come at me with a chainsaw!" Lily said.
"But none of it's real?" Filch said a little mournfully.
"Of course not, but the fear certainly is. I nearly cried once because a murderous clown came near me. It's good fun, but genuinely terrifying in the moment...I wonder if we could convince the ghosts to participate in some way? I know it's an important holiday for them in their own right, so they might be too busy, and, obviously they're not quite scary, are they? Maybe the Bloody Baron," Lily mused.
"Kids these days don't know what real fear is like. It would do them a world of good to show them," Filch cackled.
Lily was taken aback by his tone and use of "kids these days." He could hardly be much older than forty if that. Still, she considered his words.
"True, in the current political climate, there's a lot to be afraid of. Sheltering us until we're seventeen and then abandoning us to the world may not be healthy," Lily agreed. "A little exposure to build up your resistance may be wise, like you said."
Based on the events of yesterday, Lily could testify that she was one such student who couldn't healthily process fear. There was no reason to believe her peers were any better. When faced with the very clown that had frightened her sister, Petunia had automatically reacted by punching it in the face. Evans women reacted violently to fear.
"So, how did you come to be a caretaker?" Lily asked Filch, who had been scratching his head as if he were very confused by something. "Did you have a different position before or start your career straight off at Hogwarts?"
With a relish that implied no one had ever thought to ask him the question before, Filch proceeded to fill Lily in on the details of his life. It was a story of a slew of mundane, unfulfilling housekeeping positions before nepotism (he had a sympathetic third cousin on the Board of Governors) managed to get him an interview with Dumbledore. The headmaster had recognized that Filch was uniquely qualified for the position and hired him immediately in spite of his unfortunate circumstances. Filch didn't explain just what these circumstances were, but he spoke as if Dumbledore had done him a great kindness.
It was during the tail-end of this story that James arrived for detention, the other Marauders sans Peter in tow. He did a double-take when he saw Lily and a triple-take when he realized she was sharing an amiable conversation with Filch.
"Lily! What are you doing here?"
"No time for chit chat," Filch growled, his demeanor transforming him to something akin to the stories told about him. Lily guessed that James must have made an enemy of Filch through his misbehavior. He had a talent for irritating authority figures. Lily considered herself among them in her capacity first as a prefect and then as Head Girl. "You four'll be serving detention spit-shining trophies in the Trophy Room. Give something back to the school for a change."
"You know, I resent that," Sirius said cheerfully as Filch led the way. "I give so much to this school. In fact, they should give a trophy to me."
"You'd have to participate for that, Pads," Remus replied good-naturedly.
"And become like you good Samaritans? Merlin forbid," Sirius shuddered.
"What do you think Sirius's chances of becoming a good boy are, Filch?" James teased.
Making angry noises in the back of his throat, Filch marched faster towards their destination so that Lily had to jog to keep up with his long strides. Lily hated when James acted like this, goading and jeering at others as if they existed solely to amuse him. Poor Mr. Filch didn't deserve it.
"Wands," Filch demanded when they reached the Trophy Room. Bitterly, the three boys passed theirs over. When Lily went to do the same, Filch stopped her. "Not you. You can keep yours as long as you don't use it to help those three hooligans."
"Why her?" spluttered Sirius.
"Because she's Head Girl. She participates," Filch said, smiling nastily and popping the p's in 'participates.' Sirius reared back at the affront of having his previous banter turned against him.
"I'm Head Boy!" James protested.
Ignoring him, Filch dropped their bucket of supplies on the floor.
"Best get started," he snickered. And with that he was gone.
"Alright, cough it up, Lily," James said the second the door clicked shut behind Filch.
"Excuse me?"
"Your wand. Clean everything up so we can get out of here," James ordered.
Lily folded her arms tightly over her chest. "This is detention. It's not meant to be easy. It's supposed to be teaching us that there are consequences to our behavior. Using magic would defeat the purpose."
James gave her a look of pure disgust and Remus moaned loudly. She felt rather betrayed by Remus's show of disapproval because normally he was kind to her regarding her affinity for the rules. Only Sirius didn't react with annoyance, and that was because he seemed to be gloating.
"Knew she wouldn't help out. Happy to break the rules when it suits her, but not to help out her mates," Sirius snorted.
"I know you aren't referring to yourself as my mate," Lily hissed.
Smile tight and cruel, Sirius said, "Hardly."
She made sure her wand was hidden away out of reach in her robes and gathered up a sponge to set to work. Even if they did want to get out of detention early, she doubted any of them would make a play for grabbing her wand. It was considered the height of rudeness to take another wizard's wand without permission. That kind of breeding ran too deep for them.
"So, what'd you do to get detention?" James demanded. It was clear he'd been dying to ask since he first saw her in Filch's office.
Lily rolled her eyes. "I told McGonagall I was out drinking past curfew to save your sorry skins. Did you really think McGonagall just let that go?"
"Well, yeah."
He was mad. As a personal favorite of McGonagall, James should have known that she didn't discriminate when doling out detentions. He'd certainly served his fair share. Breaking rules was met with consequences. End of story.
"What about all of you?" Lily asked, figuring detention would run a lot smoother if she and Sirius could play nice and talk like mature adults.
"Funnily enough, we're all indirectly here because of you," Remus said enigmatically.
"Or directly," Sirius muttered. He didn't seem nearly as cross with her as he had been a few moments before. Learning that Lily had earned herself a detention to protect him must have mellowed him out.
"Me?"
"We took the blame for the singing in class last week," James said, gesturing between himself and Sirius.
"And I was caught removing your painting of us from the wall," Remus said. At Lily's furrowed brow, he clarified, "My method may have involved an explosion."
Well that was a little awkward. Having reflected a lot that day on the nature of guilt, however, Lily figured she needn't feel any here. While her actions had created the situations in which they'd gotten in trouble, it was their choices that had cemented it. Remus chose to blow up a wall. James and Sirius chose to incite their class. Compare that to the situation with Peter where it was Lily and Lily alone who had been the cause of harm. They were entirely different.
"How is Peter?" Lily asked.
"Last I saw, terrible," Sirius laughed.
Lily looked between the three of them in alarm. Remus once more jumped in to explain, "Terrible because he's been practicing tossing his food in the air and catching it in his mouth, and he's just rubbish."
"Can't even handle the grapes and the man tries to move on to chips? Even Prongs struggles with those!" Sirius said this as if James' troubles with chips should have meant something to all of them. Judging from James' grave nod, it did. At least to them.
"Do you remember that time in –"
"Third year, yes –"
"With the frozen chocolate-covered –"
"Cockroaches! And the sun came out –"
"Cleaning up that mess!"
"A disaster!"
All three boys laughed uproariously as they reminisced on some story she wasn't privy to. They were so in tune, tackling the trophies systematically, while finishing each other's sentences. There was so much shared history there, a complete ease with one another. Lily couldn't help but feel jealous.
"You know that would actually make a great prank," Remus chuckled, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.
"Oy! Don't mention it in front of my pranking nemesis," James ordered though he gave her a mischievous smile to let her know he was only teasing.
"Wouldn't work anyway. Who would be thick enough to accept cockroach clusters from one of us?" Sirius asked.
"Firsties?" Remus suggested.
"Nah, they've all been warned off us. Besides, we were never that gullible," James said.
"Speak for yourself. Don't you remember Peter –"
"Oh, Merlin, in the Astronomy Tower –"
"Trousers around his ankles –"
"Broomsticks on his pants and holding that pudding –"
"Sinatra's face was brill!"
"And Wormtail: 'I thought it was muggle New Years,'" they all chorused together.
Like that they were off again down memory lane. Each story they told always seemed to be missing one crucial piece of information that prevented her from understanding the joke. She tried to knowingly chuckle along with them, but they ricocheted off of one another too fast for her to even pretend to follow.
It turned out that the worst part of detention wasn't scrubbing trophies but feeling completely left out by her fellow troublemakers. They weren't doing it on purpose. She'd known them long enough to recognize that. They just forgot that she was there when they were so caught up in one another.
She was accustomed to special attention from James. Whether they were arguing or testing out their new friendship, their every interaction was characterized by their intense focus on each other. Now she questioned if that wasn't just because they were normally alone together. Maybe he treated everyone the same way.
The possibility left her disappointed.
"Lily, are you listening to me?" Remus called, pulling her out of her sullen thoughts.
"Hmmm?"
"I was asking when you want us to sit down and evaluate your pranks. We're hitting the halfway mark soon, and we shouldn't leave it to the end or some of us might find it difficult to be impartial," Remus said.
Sirius grinned, "I'm not remotely ashamed. I'd doctor the numbers to help my Jamie win in a heartbeat."
Lily thought it through while James and Sirius engaged in a brotherly bonding session that consisted of them listing increasingly extreme things they would do to prove their love to one another. Something told her it was an exaggeration when James said he would snap his own wand and eat nothing but candle wax for the rest of his life.
"Sunday's probably best," Lily recommended.
"I plan to still be pissed from the night before," Sirius whined.
"You shouldn't be drinking in the first place," Lily said.
"Are you sure your title's not actually Head-Hypocrite?" Sirius sing-songed.
"Enough," James groaned, clapping his sudsy hands over his ears. "I can't take you two and your bickering."
Remus let out a sharp peal of laughter. "Sorry, it's just, who'd have thought we'd see the day where James was telling someone else off for arguing with Lily?"
Smiling at the floor, Lily returned to trying to scrub off a particularly stubborn clump of dirt adhered to the Heads plaque from 1954. Remus's words made her think about just how far she and James had come. Lily wouldn't say she had misjudged him for years (she hadn't), but she had discovered that when she stepped back and let herself get to know him, he was rather decent. There was no reason Sirius should be any different.
She'd have to make an effort to be patient with him. Jumping to defend herself every time he made a biting comment was foolish. It was just Sirius's way. Beneath that, he was likely a lovely person and definitely a good friend to have. The evidence of that was right in front of her.
The only obstacle was that she was fairly certain Sirius was holding some sort of grudge against her. She'd noticed an extra level of hostility from him since that morning. While it would have been the most understandable reason, she couldn't shake the sense that it wasn't stemming from hospitalizing Peter. At least not entirely.
A desire for peace at the forefront of her mind, Lily was able to remain civil with Sirius for the rest of their detention. Granted, she managed this by remaining mostly quiet and letting them joke around with each other, but she considered it a victory all the same.
Soon enough, detention was over and they were all free to go their separate ways. Or rather, the Marauders were free to run off and spend more time making jokes that Lily wasn't privy to, and Lily was free to make her way back to Gryffindor Tower. Only, watching as they laughed, the jealousy she'd been feeling all night reared its ugly head and roared.
So it was that without taking a second to think it through, Lily said, "Umm, James, could you spare a minute?"
James looked indiscreetly between her and his friends. Of course he'd rather spend time with his mates than talking to her. She didn't know why she might have thought differently. She had just witnessed first-hand how effortlessly close they were with each other.
"Sure, Lily," James agreed finally before turning to his mates and promising to catch up with them later. "What is it?"
An excellent question. The choice to call out to him had been impulsive, driven solely by the desire to talk to him. She wanted to confirm that the connection that she'd felt with him before, the one that made her feel almost special to him, was still there and not just a figment of her vanity. Seeing him in his element had really shaken her.
"I was hoping you could tell me that err, chocolate cockroach story from before. I couldn't quite follow, and it sounded funny," Lily finished lamely.
For a moment, James just looked at her. His usual hair-ruffling and compulsive twitching were conspicuously absent. James was the only person she knew that never stood still. His stillness now gave his scrutiny of her more gravity than she would have liked. It was she who now fumbled nervously – tucking strands of her hair behind her ears where it had escaped her bun.
Blessedly, he finally said in a deep voice, "Yeah, it's a pretty good one. Want to take a walk?"
In wordless agreement, they strolled in the opposite direction of the other Marauders, heading towards the Charms classrooms. Lily was hyper-aware of their proximity, and judging by the looks James sent her hand as it swung loosely at her side, centimeters from his own, he was as well. The moment felt peculiarly charged.
"So it's third-year, and Pete tells us that some muggles actually eat cockroaches, not chocolate ones but the real thing. So, of course, we don't believe him," James began, launching easily into the story. "You don't eat cockroaches do you?"
Lily couldn't help but laugh at the look of concerned disgust on James' face. "No. It's not a common muggle food."
"The fact that anyone does is just…" James shuddered. "Anyway, so Pete swears it's true. He's a cousin who's a muggle, and she said you freeze them and dip them in chocolate. Now, at the same time, Remus and Sirius had this bet going about who could go the longest without getting a detention. Remus won."
"Shocker," Lily muttered sarcastically.
"Don't interrupt. It messes up the flow of the story," James chided in a self-important tone that let her know he was teasing. "Anyway, you may be right that Sirius not being able to stay out of trouble isn't surprising, but what you probably don't realize is that Remus can be pretty evil himself. He does a decent job hiding it, but trust me, he's downright devious. So being an evil genius and seeing as Sirius lost, Remus dares Sirius to eat a plateful of chocolate-covered cockroaches as punishment, and obviously, Sirius can't refuse."
Obviously. Boys were so stupid sometimes.
"We had to wait for the summer so we could buy the cockroaches and then we froze them with magic. So it's July, and we're outside on my lawn even though it's sweltering out because my mum never let us play in the house during the summer because she says it's a waste of a nice day or some rubbish. Plus, she would have gone barking if she found out we were eating cockroaches."
Lily smiled to herself picturing her mum telling her much the same about getting out of the house when the sun was shining. Mrs. Potter sounded like she had a great deal more sense than her son.
James paused his story-telling so he could race full-speed up the ornery Western staircase to the second floor. The staircase was notorious for resenting the students who tread on it and would often flatten into a steep slide, sending any students caught on it careening down into a heap on the ground. Most people, Lily included, just adapted to walking a few minutes out of their way to avoid it.
People like James viewed it as a challenge.
With a deep, steadying breath, Lily sprinted after him. The staircase didn't react at all to her presence and remained erect. She felt breathless from having taken the risk more so than from the exertion from the run. The risk and the realization that she never would have taken it in the first place if not for James left her feeling oddly giddy.
As if he hadn't been interrupted, James continued, "Anyway, we've got warm, melted chocolate, and we just smother them with it. Sirius takes his first bite, and he'd only just stopped whinging about how crunchy and unappetizing it was, when the second one in his hand flies up and slams straight into his eye!"
Lily clapped a hand to her mouth partially in horror but partially also to suppress her laughter. She could just picture Sirius's refined face twisting up in surprise as he was assaulted by a cockroach.
"Next thing we know, all the cockroaches on the plate start hopping about," James said. "Turns out that freezing a cockroach doesn't actually kill it. They just go into like, hibernation or something. Between the heat and the chocolate, they thawed out!"
"Eww!"
"After that it's just complete bedlam. We've got easily two dozen cockroaches hopping around, dripping chocolate. Sirius is cursing up a storm and can't open his left eye. Peter's screaming because they're fucking disgusting. Moony and I are laughing so hard we can't breathe. With all the noise, my mum comes out to see what the fuss is about, leaving the door to the parlor wide open," James said, gesturing wildly.
"Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes," James nodded. "They scuttle right on into the house and start treading chocolate all over the floors. They fly up onto the furniture – my mum's a big fan of white, mind you – and they're staining that as well. I can't tell you who's screaming louder, my mum or Peter."
Lily was completely caught up in the picture he was painting. He was an engaging speaker in general, but she thought his true gift was storytelling. There were no extraneous details, but he wasn't afraid to drag out the story for dramatic effect either. His gesticulating hands only punctuated the urgency of his story.
"How did you catch them all?" Lily asked.
"We didn't. We put down poison and placed wards on the doors so they couldn't get through, but for weeks we were finding new tracks of chocolate. As punishment, my mum made me clean it all without magic," James said solemnly.
If Lily's actions had resulted in a roach infestation and ruined furniture in the Evans' home, she'd be in a lot worse trouble than just some screaming. She'd be lucky if her mum ever let her leave her room again after that.
"I cannot believe that happened to you," Lily chortled.
"Don't tell my mum, but I wouldn't take it back. It was probably the funniest thing that happened to me that summer," James said, chuckling.
"I pity your mother."
"Many people do," James agreed, nodding gravely.
Lily glanced away, smile all but tattooed onto her face. There was something swelling in her chest. She thought it might have been gratitude that he'd shared this story with her. That he'd chased away all her feelings of exclusion by telling her something that seemed to belong to the Marauders. It shouldn't have mattered to her at all. And yet…
They had absent-mindedly made their way toward the Ravenclaw dormitories. Several times in the past, Lily had entered for various parties. She'd noticed that the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were much more inclined to open their common rooms to other Houses for parties. The Gryffindors almost always found alternative locations, like the Black Lake or an abandoned classroom for theirs, while the Slytherins normally hosted private, in-house affairs.
Lily became aware that James was looking at her strangely, eyebrow cocked like he was sizing her up for something. Her prefect instincts told her that look meant nothing but trouble.
"Do you think we'd be clever enough to guess the riddle guarding the door?" James asked. Lily's only answer was a wary shrug. "It's always bothered me that their only security against interlopers is a riddle. It's like saying no one from the other houses could possibly be smart enough to break in."
"You're not suggesting that we break into the Ravenclaw dormitories?" Lily asked in disbelief.
James' eyes gleamed mischievously. "Why not? You need to finish a few more pranks this week. Let's just guess the answer and walk in. Imagine all their faces!"
"You'll just argue it doesn't count as one of my pranks because you came up with it," Lily hedged.
With a hand to his heart, James vowed, "Marauders' honor, you can take full credit."
Lily conceded for three reasons. The first was that she really was behind on her pranks for the week. The days passed by so quickly and there were hardly enough hours to handle all her responsibilities and then plot out and execute a few pranks let alone ten. Second, James looked so excited at the prospect. She didn't want to be the person that made him stop grinning like that. Third, given his excitement at the idea, if she said no, he'd probably just return with his mates. Lily wanted this to remain something they shared. Something that belonged to them. The idea that she'd someday hear the Marauders laughingly describe this very prank and know that she could have been a part of it was more upsetting than she cared to admit.
"Alright, let's do this," Lily said.
They practically skipped to the door. Having orchestrated a number of pranks now, Lily was no longer nervous at the prospect. Instead, she embraced the giddiness that came along with the anticipation. Having a partner-in-crime for once seemed to multiply the feeling, and she found herself forcing back unwarranted laughter.
The keyhole on the door knocker that separated them from the inside of the Ravenclaw common room yawned open like a mouth and intoned:
"I'm just two & two, I am warm, I am
cold;
And the parent of numbers that cannot be
told;
I am lawful, unlawful, a duty, a fault;
I'm often sold dear, good for nothing
when bought;
An extraordinary boon, and a matter
of course,
And I yield no pleasure when taken
by force."
Scratching his head, James mouthed the riddle to himself. She recognized the slight scowl of his lips from the rare occasions when he'd struggled to master a charm Flitwick assigned. In the past, Lily had thought his expression of outrage at not understanding something had been one more sign that James was arrogant. Everyone struggled sometimes, and yet he thought he ought to be the exception. Now, she thought it was kind of cute.
At a loss as to the answer, Lily all the same enthusiastically shouted, "'Nothing!'"
The door remained shut.
"How can nothing be warm or cold?" James demanded.
"Dunno, it just seems like the answer to these things is always 'nothing,'" Lily shrugged unapologetically.
James snapped his fingers. "That's brilliant! We know the answer is going to turn out to be some abstract concept. We can just throw those out there until one of them sticks."
So that's what they did. With increasing intensity, they lobbed a list of emotions and concepts at the unresponsive door. With each failed answer, Lily grew more irritable.
"It has to be 'success,'" Lily cried for the fourth time. "Success is only worth something if your earn it. The 'numbers' in the riddle must mean money. You can achieve success through crooked means, and it's no good if you step on others to get it!"
James groaned and banged his head against the wall. "You can keep screaming it's the right answer all you want, but the door's not opening. It's not right!"
"It's the only answer that makes sense!" Lily snarled in frustration.
"Clearly not," James retorted.
Remembering who their real enemy was, Lily rounded on the knocker. It looked so innocent, resting there brassy and silent. Lies!
She crouched down so it was at eye-level. "I know the answer is success. You can stay closed all you want, but I know I beat you. Being a sore loser changes nothing. You might as well open up."
"Easy there, Lily. You're starting to sound maniacal," James said with more amusement than the situation called for.
Lily ignored him, instead opting to right herself and kick the door. "Open up you piece of shite! Bloody hunk of wood. I'll –"
Any of her plans to further berate the inanimate door were ruined when James scooped her up from behind and dragged her a few meters away. Being lifted like she was a rag doll did nothing to improve her mood. So, the second he set her down against the wall, she kicked him in the shin. Evidently even in her anger she still didn't want to really hurt him because the force of the blow didn't even make him wince. In fact, he smiled.
"James, I suggest you back away now, or you're going to find yourself in a great deal of pain," Lily threatened.
Rudely, James laughed in her face and did the opposite. His hands fell against the wall on either side of her head (well, above her head), caging her in. She realized he was using the wall for support because he was laughing so hard he would topple over otherwise.
"S-s-sorry. I just forget what a little menace you are sometimes. Most of the time you're prim and proper as my Great Aunt Aurelia, and then boom! Do you have a ball of fury just brewing inside you all the time?" James snickered.
"Laugh it up," Lily said in a tone that implied doing so would be dangerous for his health.
"You're literally barring your teeth at me right now." James laughed even harder.
Lily's mouth closed with an audible snap. She realized that she might be feeling a little bit touchy. The last thing she wanted was to freak out and have to apologize to him again. Perhaps she did have something of a short-temper that she needed to work on.
Without her anger blinding her, Lily became cognizant of just how close they were to one another. If she arched her back even a little, she would be pressing her chest into his.
When he'd come back from the summer after fifth year, having sprouted like a bean pole and knocking his head into low hanging doorways, Lily had noticed. Everyone had noticed. But she'd never really thought about just how tall James was. Their dramatic height difference placed her eyelevel at where his Head Boy pin should have been pinned to his robes, right on the place where his robes tightened over defined pectorals.
She thought back to the party where they had snogged. After a minor panic the morning after, she'd done her best not to think about it. The fight between James and Sev had been scary in a way that made her want to block the whole incident out, and she'd been foggy from the alcohol anyway.
Now, Lily couldn't stop herself from remembering how good it had felt. Never had she experienced anything with another person that had felt so thrilling, and while Lily may have been planning to remain a virgin until she found the man she would marry, she wasn't a complete innocent. Her escapades into pleasure with her past boyfriends had gone a lot further than just snogging. Snogging wasn't supposed to feel like that. Yet with James it did.
The direction of her thoughts must have been plain on her face because when James opened his eyes and saw her expression, he abruptly stopped laughing. The only sound in the corridor was their oddly loud breathing.
She wished she could pretend it was an unconscious gesture, but when Lily then wet her lips, she did so to see if he would look.
He did.
Lily had very little time to think about things. A man with that look in his eye – the heat, the focus – wasn't going to wait long. She had to quickly come to terms with the fact that unless she did something then and there, James Potter was going to kiss her.
There would be no alcohol to blame it on this time. No mitigating circumstances. On a Thursday evening, Lily was going to let James Potter kiss her. That would mean something.
And the fear of what that something might be still wasn't enough to make her pull away.
The accursed door banged open at that moment, and James pulled backwards instead of moving forward like he was supposed to. Like she wanted him to.
Of the hundreds of Ravenclaws at Hogwarts, the two that walked out were the two she'd least want to catch her in a compromising position with James: Rin and Adrian.
Frantically, Lily pawed at her hair as if she'd just been ravished rather than simply shared an intense stare with the body standing calmly in front of her. She felt like what had almost happened was spelled out on her face.
"Alright, Lily?" Rin greeted. "James?"
"Alright," Lily gasped out.
"Where're you off to?" James asked, sounding unbelievably normal.
"Last minute library run before curfew," Adrian answered, smiling widely in Lily's direction. She could barely return it.
"Any reason you're lurking outside our dormitory?" Rin asked.
"Are you questioning your Head students? Really, Iwate. Have a little faith," James said in mock outrage.
If Lily hadn't known any better, she would have thought he was flirting with Rin. She was certainly smiling back in the way a girl would if she was being chatted up by a bloke she fancied. James couldn't possibly flirt with a different girl only seconds after he almost kissed Lily though. Unless…
Unless he hadn't been about to kiss her at all. Sure, she felt confident that he'd looked, but that didn't mean he would have acted on it. They fought an awful lot and she'd rejected him so many times in the past. He probably didn't want to kiss her. He had Rin now. Beautiful, shiny-haired Rin who could guess the right answer to a riddle and never lost her temper and started kicking blokes.
"We're just doing some extra patrols to make sure the castle's safe. These are dark times. We need to be vigilant. You'll need to take extra care, Rin," James teased, perfectly unruffled even as Lily felt herself unravelling.
"And I suppose you could keep me safe?" Rin asked.
"I could die trying," James smirked.
Lily hoped the ground would swallow her whole.
"I'm heading to the library before it closes," Adrian announced, sounding put off by the blatant flirting happening in front of him. Lily doubted he was a tenth as bothered by it as she was. "Looking forward to seeing you Saturday, Lily."
She could barely remember what the appropriate response to that would be let alone give it. Though she managed at least enough that no one tried to take her to the Hospital Wing to be checked out. Rin left alongside him.
They hadn't dived to stop the Ravenclaw dormitory entrance from closing once again, so they were still locked out. Without speaking, Lily and James had both known it would be cheating to do so. The challenge was the riddle, not tricking their way into the dormitory. They could have just asked a friend to let them in otherwise.
"Maybe we should just give up. We're never going to guess it," Lily suggested quietly.
She just wanted to head back to her dormitory and sulk. There would be no tears. She saved her crying for debilitating accidents and possibly-homicidal bullies. Rejection wasn't nearly upsetting enough. Still, she couldn't see herself laughing it up with James if they managed to get in. Not anymore.
In a voice Lily couldn't decipher, James said, "I've figured it out. The answer's a 'kiss.'"
The heaviness in his voice knocked aside all of her self-doubt. She may not have understood what James was thinking, but his tone left no doubt that she hadn't imagined the almost kiss. He had been seconds away from kissing her. Her and not Rin.
His answer must have been correct because the door silently opened. For a moment, she paused, unsure where they were supposed to go from there. James wasn't meeting her eye, looking instead at the entrance.
For whatever reason, James seemed set on pretending nothing had happened. And he was right. There was no reason to make a dramatic display out of nothing, she decided. Before her was a door and she could either walk forward or go backwards.
As a Gryffindor, there was only ever one choice.